


Even slaves have needs

by Romanumeternal



Series: Olia and Quintus [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 18:13:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16124018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romanumeternal/pseuds/Romanumeternal
Summary: It turns out Olia is surprisingly imaginative in the bedroom.(I debated for a while which way she'd go...)





	Even slaves have needs

Alexandria, I think, is prettiest in the evening.

From our flat, the blood red setting sun spills across the waves, dyeing them encarmine; the image distorted and reflected in the steel and glass towers of the New City. The largest of these, named simply the Nail, twists upwards, impossibly tall, impossibly thin, topped by a great bronze orb, whilst four hundred metres below the well to do walk down the promenades, illuminated with lights of a hundred different colours, shaded from the fading light by the rows of manicured palm trees that line what used to be, in decades past, the docks. In the ocean, pleasure boats ride on the waves, some of them clustering around the statue of Minerva, holding a book and torch; the torch slowly growing in brightness as dusk falls, until at night it is by far the brightest thing in the harbour, bathing the whole area in a harsh, white light. Above it, airships float, lazily; their sides flickering with adverts. 

Quintus was lounging on one of the chairs on our balcony - not admiring the view, but irritably tapping on his tablet. Graphs and tables and charts and numbers appeared and disappeared far too quickly for me to make much sense of them. However, whatever meaning they did hold was obviously not pleasing my dominus.

I went up to him.

"Dominus, its evening" I said, severely. "Put that tablet down."

"Just a few more-"

I glared at him. 

"Whatever your colleagues have done" I said "the problem will still be there in the morning. You should relax, dominus."

Exactly what Quintus' workmates had done, other than making possibly a mistake of some kind, was somewhat unclear - Quintus' explanation had started off with words like "differential operators", "leveraged acquisition ratios" and "stochastic stage transitions", interspersed with words like "utter imbeciles" and "how stupid can you be", and had decreased in clarity from that point - but whatever it was, it had irritated him and required him to redo large chunks of the mathematical model he was working on.

 

"But-"

I lent forward, and took the tablet out of his hands, placing it on the table. In exchange, I passed him a glass of cranberry juice.

"No buts, dominus." I grinned. "What kind of slave would I be if I let my beloved owner work himself to death?"

Quintus glared at me, before taking a sip of juice.

"Its a good thing I like you" he muttered. 

"Just 'like'", I teased. I knew, or, at least, strongly suspected, that he loved me as much as he could anyone, but somehow saying anything more would always stick in his throat. A depressing thought, to be sure, and one I dismissed. It was too nice an evening. I lay down beside him on the coach, snuggling up to him unselfconsciously.

Quintus grinned. "'Tolerate.'" He paused, cocking his head, smiling that toothy smile that made me smile everytime I saw it. "'Endure'".

"My poor dominus" I said. "Bullied by a slave girl."

"Better looking than most bullies I've met" he said, watching an airship, distantly, and then grinning as a face appeared on it. A plump, rather attractive face, with a desperate smile. I frowned.

"Looks familiar."

He turned to face me. "'Looks familiar'? Olly, that's Lucius. Romulus Above, he used to be on television all the time when I was twelve or so. Daytime shows, mostly. The only thing worth watching on half of them. He was hilarious." 

I shrugged. "Like I said, dominus, vaguely familiar." Of course, a cynic might feel there was a reason why Quintus watched a lot of television and I didn't. For a slavegirl like me, the screen was an occasional, weekly treat in between education and chores.

"'Watch Out Scipio?'" asked Quintus. "'Honour and Glory'? 'Vigilium Live'? 'Hound Hunters?' 'Servila and Friends?' 'Arena'?" He shook his head. "You missed out, Olia."

There was probably an argument that most girls of my status have missed out on a lot, and on far more than television. I looked at him archly. 

"I never realised you watched so much junk television, dominus." 

He sniffed, smiling. "Firstly, I was ill and bedridden. Secondy, it wasn't all junk. 'Honour and Glory' was good; quite uplifting stories of soldiers and that sort of thing. 'Vigilium Live' was not bad either. Sort of showed typical days for Vigilium officers."

"You say he used to be on television" I said, grinning at Quintus' surprisingly plebian tastes in television. Myself, I much prefer a nice documentary - something soothing, Hortus Mundo or Albanica or something. 

Quintus smirked. "Yes. Turned out he had a thing for whores. Not bad in of itself, a man has his needs and all. But his thing was allowing one to tie him up and - well. You can imagine the uproar. You can't have a role model who enjoys that sort of thing can you?

"What?"

"Well, he had a favourite slave at one of these whorehouses, and his thing was being tied up - she'd tie him up, slap him even...it all leaked out. The girl's owner put a camera in the room to blackmail him." He paused, cocking his head. "Well, it was all over the news and that was his career gone. Fairness to him, he took it well. Sued the brothel into oblivion and got the girl for himself." He grinned. "I guess that scandal meant that no one minded when he married her." He pointed at the airship again. "He obviously convinced the Office of Public Morals to let him back on."

"Why did anyone care?"

He looked at me, as he sometimes does when I remind him I didn't grow up a citizen of, in his father's words, the One True Civilisation.

"Well...Olia. I mean, he let a woman take the lead, in bed. And not just that, but make him the submissive partner. Hades, she handcuffed him up to a bedpost!"

"But...it was just what he liked." I snickered. "And I guess, dominus, since she married him, she much preferred being with him. It didn't hurt anyone, and they probably both had fun."

"So?" said Quintus. "I mean, visiting whores is one thing, fair enough, but..." he shook his head.

I shook my head tolerantly, musing that no matter how many free Romans I know, I'll never fully understand them. Visiting and sleeping with a girl who's rented out? Fine. Letting said girl tie you down? Apparently a sin so heinous Pluto would have to get especially inventive.

"I don't know, dominus." I said. I cocked my head, thoughtfully. There was, now that I thought about it, a certain appeal to the idea. Quintus, his slender, pale frame tied down, whilst I straddled him, playing with him, running my hands over him, knowing that I was the one unquestionably in charge, no matter how it might be outside of the bedroom. 

"Sort of degenerate thing you get in Vanasia, I guess"

I ignored him, picturing us together - perhaps, even, if we were feeling particularly transgressive, him calling me 'Domina'...

I shook my head. My actual dominus, who wasn't tied down and, I was both sure and sincerely hoped, knew nothing of what I was thinking, was staring at me curiously.

"Sorry, dominus?"

"Well, Vanasians might go for that sort of thing." He reached down, and picked up a grape, blue eyes looking into mine. "You seemed miles away for a moment." He raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you see the fun in that."

I shook my head. "Definitely not, dominus." I paused, getting an image of a naked, teased Quintus out of my head. "No, definitely not."

**Author's Note:**

> As per the ancient Law, all works set in an alternate universe must have airships in the skyline.
> 
> Quintus works as a financial modeller in a fairly major bank. Not that he really needs the money, but it does allow him a very nice apartment in Alexandria, which is sort of our equivalent of Silicon Valley. 
> 
> The Commonwealth of Vanasia is a loose alliance of several hundred states, ranging from puritanical theocracies to mercantile city states to ultra-libertarian communes, and covers most of what we'd call North America. Romans tend to regard it as dangerously unstable, definitely decadent but nonetheless quite intriguing.


End file.
